U.S. soldier gets double-arm transplant (WOW!)

Whatever faults there might be with American healthcare, you have to admit: it still kicks ass like nobody else!Retired U.S. Army Sergeant Brendan Marrocco (right) lost all four limbs to a roadside bomb attack while serving in Iraq in 2009. It's nothing short of miraculous that Marrocco is the most severely-injured American service member to have survived such an ordeal.It's...

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Dung beetles use Milky Way to move poop

That's odd. I've eaten lots of Milky Way bars at my girlfriend's house......and I didn't know the stuff was a laxative.*rimshot* "Yes ladies and gentlemen I'll be here all week!!" Actually I speak of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is most visible in the Southern Hemisphere and which the humble dung beetle of sub-Saharan Africa uses for stellar navigation, scientist have recently...

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Homeland Security sez: Fight mass shooters with scissors!

Shear-ly they can't be serious.Just when you'd think that the Department of Homeland Security could not possibly prove it's the most useless U.S. government agency in the history of anything... they release this:So if a carbine-wielding madman bursts into your office or school and starts shooting up the place, fend him off with a pair of scissors! Unless he also has a rock...

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Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, has passed away

The sad news broke this morning that Ed Koch, mayor of New York City for twelve years and certainly one of the most colorful characters in American political history, died earlier today. He was 88.Disagree with him on some things though one might, it must be agreed by all that Koch gave his gal-darned best for his city. Koch managed his town instead of trying to manage...

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Mellow Mushroom goes the extra mile for U.S. soldier's family

There is a Mellow Mushroom that opened up not long ago in nearby Burlington. I've yet to eat at that one but now I'm feeling led to. For one thing the pizza is insanely delicious. For another, after reading this next story y'all will agree: this company rocks!The tale begins with Army National Guard Major Shawn Fulker, who lives in Jacksonville, Florida. At the moment...

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70 degrees Fahrenheit at quarter 'til 5 p.m.

This is in north-central North Carolina, mind ya, and ordinarily at this time in the midst of winter the temperature should be about 40 degrees colder.I went to Greensboro yesterday evening. It was much the same, with people wearing shorts, t-shirts etc. at 8 at night. I wore my "Weird Al" Yankovic Alpocalypse Tour shirt and if I didn't know any better could have sworn it was late spring.But I've already seen snow four times this winter so far,...

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Bias in mainstream press? WHAT bias?! (anti-gun vs. pro-life)

The apparently big story right now is about the estimated fewer than 1,000 who marched in Washington D.C. today against the Second Amendment. I understand that this has made all of the major evening new broadcasts: CBS, NBC, CNN etc.To the very best of my understanding, there was NO such coverage at all of yesterday's March for Life, which many have calculated drew more than...

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Winter Storm Khan is giving us snow today

Dear management and staff of The Weather Channel:You probably thought this was something "cute", didn't you?Next year, just drop the whole "names for winter storms" thing, okay? "Gandalf" was pushing it already. But not like this... "Khaaaaaaan!!"...

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Gun control lunacy: Feinstein would take YOUR weapon but keep hers, and the modern cost of saving a life

Senator Dianne Feinstein - a person who exemplifies the absolute worst that an elected official could possibly be - is trying to ram through another gun control bill on Capitol Hill. It would take away dang nearly every firearm that We The People have as articulated in the Second Amendment... EXCEPT for her own and those of other government officials.So lemme get this straight: Feinstein, who owns a pistol or two herself, wants legislation that...

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Crazy new data storage: DNA and quartz crystals (for 300 million years)

Because I don't want to go to bed with two consecutive posts pertaining to Star Wars staring me in the face (no matter how good, or how nutty)...A strand of DNA containing the digital data of all of Shakespeare's sonnets, a half-minute sound clip of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, a photo and a science paper was announced a few days ago in an article from the...

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And STAR WARS EPISODE VII will be directed by... J.J. Abrams!

Get ready for it peeps...My head hurts just thinking about what a lightsaber battle is going to look like after Abrams gets finished with all his lens flare plug-ins.The biggest news of this hour is that J.J. Abrams will be directing Star Wars Episode VII. This will be his next project after the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness.Hmmmm... Star Wars and Star Trek together at...

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Turkish group claims LEGO Jabba's Palace is racist, offensive to religion

Let's compare some fiction and fact...- Jabba's Palace was first built by the B'omarr Monks, who continued to live within it and practice their religion long after after Jabba the Hutt took over and made it his headquarters.- The Hagia Sophia was a Christian basilica until 1453 when Ottoman Turks forced their way inside, slaughtering thousands of innocent people whose blood...

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Yes, it can really be like this...

Bipolar Bear, whose entire appearance in the animated series The Tick was for a whopping 8 seconds (series premiere The Tick vs. The Idea Men, 1994):Heh-heh, love it! I've thought since the beginning that The Tick was one of the most intelligent, cerebral and funny shows to ever come out of animation. Nothing of the past decade and a half comes even close. The Nineties seriously was the height of the animated series as an art form and The Tick...

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Hu Songwen: Kept alive for 13 years by his self-made dialysis machine!

This man is hardcore. HARD-CORE, no two ways about it. MacGuyver ain't got nuthin' on this dude...Hu Songwen was diagnosed with early kidney failure in 1993. A college student at the time, Hu went to a regular hospital for the next six years on a routine basis to have dialysis scrub his blood of the waste material that a healthy metabolism has no problem with passing out...

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Forty years of silent screaming

The moment is still seared into my memory. Indeed, I can still feel the revulsion that was far too much for a little child to have to grasp.It was this day in 1983. I had seen on the news about something called "abortion". Seems that it was the tenth anniversary of it being allowed. So I asked Mom what "abortion" means."It means a mother kills her baby before it's born."A...

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LOST as a Nintendo-style role-playing game

It's been ages since anything Lost-related has appeared on this site. Someday I'll try to write up an essay that's been percolating for a year or two: how the answers to everything we'd been looking for really, honestly were revealed or explained by the time of "The End" in 2012. Including how the Island could move (there's a scientific theory for that!).Until then, it's nice to see that Lost still resonates. Enough so that CollegeHumor.com explored...

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Look: A real X-rated movie! (more about DJANGO UNCHAINED)

Yes, I realize that this post might bother some people. But I'm going to say it anyway...A few minutes ago I published my review of Django Unchained. A movie that some have condemned as being "insensitive", "racist", "offensive", and too many other epithets that are wildly, wildly wrong.I will not only stand by what I've written about Django Unchained - that it's not a film about slavery or even race at all but instead an epic quest to find one's...

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